Page 140 of Wasted Grace

I bite back a grin and turn to Greesha. “Whatdidyou do to him, Aadya?”

Another shrug.

“Oh, she... she strangled him,” Dev blurts, his hands flailing into an approximation of the move. “Like... wow.Glorioustechnique.”

Greesha snorts this time—actual sound—but her eyes stay glued to the phone.

I smirk and lean back in my chair, letting the absurdity of the moment settle in.

Then we wait for Viraj to wake up and take us through his... master plan.

FORTY

Viraj

“Why, Lakshit?”

The words ring over and over again. My brain unable to process them as they come. From a woman I thought I hadfinallyfallen for.

Greesha was someone whosharedmy lifestyle and held it at a greater level than our previous ones. She knew me in a way I hadn’t realized I wanted to be known. Beseen.

But it was all crashing down, wasn’t it?

The moment her little tryst came back in her life.

But that wasn’t my focus. It was how she called meLakshit. A name I had buried decades ago. Something out of a life that was best forgotten—erased.

Greesha calling me Lakshit was blindsiding me with something I had willfully forgotten.

“Why, Lakshit?”

No one had called me by that name in a very,verylong time. Not since...

“W-Why, Lakshit?” Her whimpers bled into my head. “Please just tell me why!”

The moments of grief were far and few between. My life had been a bloody catalogue of deaths that I witnessed—withoutactuallyletting them scar me. It was a life I chose when I turned twenty. A life my father would’ve admired—respected.

He was dead, so what did it matter?

But when hercriesstarted to become louder than my determinantscreams, I gave up. I... becameViraj. And left Lakshit promptly behind.

“Laksh... please,” she sniffled. “I—”

At twenty-two, I abandoned a life I thought I’d been building with her...Niyati.

“Please just. Tell me why you need to go when you said—you said the last assignment was your final one,” she wailed. Tears streaking her beautiful face.

But she didn’t get it, did she?

That my life wasn’t mine. It wasn’t even my father’s. It was... mycountry’s. I had sought that adrenaline for more than half my life—and Niya was standing between it.

Or was she?

So when I found Greesha, I knew it in my bones that she wasit. She was the one who fuckinggot me.Understood me.

But I think I may have miscalculated. I may have ignored the weight her past held her with. Because as she squeezes the sides of my neck.

My last thought is conflicted.